A Disney honeymoon, an old EPCOT clip, and a question every family needs to answer.
Mrs. Chaps and I spent our first night as husband and wife driving south in a 1980 Oldsmo-Buick toward the Mouse House. Thirty-something years and a lot of Disney trips later, an old clip of Walt Disney himself taught me more about raising a family than most parenting books ever have.
We are a Disney family. Have been since the beginning. We rushed through our wedding ceremony — a simple, laughing-through-the-sermon kind of church wedding — changed clothes at her mom's house, and pointed the car toward Orlando. That was the honeymoon. Decades and countless WDW trips later — including Disneyland season passes while stationed in SoCal with the Marines, a trip to Tokyo Disney, a Disney Vacation Club membership we're not the least bit sorry about — we're still going back.
So of course, one evening, we were watching Disney Plus. An episode on the building of EPCOT Center theme park came on — Walt's original vision of an "experimental prototype community." At the end, there's historical footage of Walt himself explaining what EPCOT would be. He declared it would never really be finished. It would always be evolving, always reaching toward some new version of the future.
"EPCOT is always becoming."
That line has stuck with me since. Because it isn't just true of a theme park. It's true of every person at your table, and every family sitting around it.
Here's the lesson: your family is always becoming something. The only question is whether you're steering that, or just watching it happen. Families don't hold still. Kids grow, seasons change, priorities shift — some of it good (our daughter still isn't over Frozen taking Maelstrom's spot in the Norway Pavilion, but we’re better than 40% Scandinavian, so it tracks). Some of it isn't. The families who come through the changes intact aren't the ones who avoided change. They're the ones who knew what anchored them through it.
Psychologists call the absence of that anchor "thwarted belongingness" — the sense of not truly being part of something bigger than yourself. Left unanswered, it doesn't just sit quietly. It casts people adrift, kids and adults both. And most families never sit down and actually name what holds them together. Not because they don't care — because nobody ever asked the question out loud.
That's the work. Not a grand mission statement. Just an honest answer to: what anchors us? Faith? Identity? A shared history? What is it that says to the world, "this is who we are"? And if you don't have a clean answer yet — if you've drifted, or your kids have — that's not failure. That's just where you are. Proverbs puts it simply: train up a child in the way he should go, and he won't depart from it. That's a long conversation for another night. But it starts somewhere concrete: the table.
If you're not sure how to open that conversation tonight, the 52 Conversation Starters gives you a ready-made question for every dinner this year — no guesswork, no awkward silence, just an easy way in. Find it at dinnercommander.com.
Tonight's Briefing
Name it out loud tonight. Ask your family what you think anchors you as a family — then actually listen to what they say.
Don't force a tidy answer. If the table goes quiet or the answers are messy, that's normal. Let it be a start, not a finish.
Watch for the drift. A withdrawn kid or a checked-out teen may be showing early signs of thwarted belongingness — treat it as a cue to lean in, not lecture.
Give grace, including to yourself. If your family hasn't had this conversation in years, tonight is still a good night to start.
Anchor it to something concrete. A phrase, a value, a story — something you can point back to on hard days.
Every family eats. Not every family knows what anchors it.
Tonight's Table Question
If someone outside our family had to guess what we care about most just by watching us for a week, what would they say — and is that actually true?
This Week's Challenge
Pick one night this week and ask everyone at the table to finish this sentence out loud: "Our family is the kind that ___." Write down the answers on a sticky note or the back of a napkin and put it somewhere you'll see it again next week. (If you want some help, check out “The Family Anchor Statement” at dinnercommander.com. )
Execute the Mission
Every family is always becoming something — the only question is whether you're the one steering it. That's exactly the work Dinner Commander exists to help you do.
Join the growing community of families at dinnercommander.com who are:
Reclaiming dinner as sacred family time
Building unbreakable connection through conversation
Creating protective factors for mental and family health
Raising kids who actually want to spend time together
If you find value in this or know of someone who could really use these tips, please forward this newsletter to them and invite them to join our community too!
You don't need a theme park's budget to build something that lasts — just a table and a little intentionality. Check out “The Family Anchor Statement” at dinnercommander.com.
Crafting Connection, One Dinner at a Time!
P.S. — What's your family actually anchored to? I'd genuinely love to know — hit reply and tell me. I read every one.
— Chaps